Until recently, Yugo Azuma, 25, was just another graduate student in Poland, having moved there from Japan last summer, and was about to start working full time from April.
But his life changed after Russian troops invaded Ukraine in February, prompting more than 2 million people to flee to neighboring Poland. Stations in Katowice in southern Poland — where Azuma resides with his fiancee, Marta Kierzek, and son — were full of refugees, some sleeping on the ground with nowhere else to go.
It didn’t take long for Azuma and Kierzek to decide to take in refugees at their home.